This is not my favorite column to write. In my youth, death was death, something which happened to everyone else. As a young man, I looked upon it as simply draining the talent pool because by then I was consumed with music— immersed in it to the point that life beyond it was a blur. In middle-age, it began becoming personal— friends and favorites taking the dive either stunningly quick or in dire circumstances.
I want to tell you about four musicians— people, really— but I don’t know if I can. Oh, I could tell a few stories, wrangle up some comments and maybe tell you about their music, which is more than likely what I will attempt to do, but I will not be able to really tell you anything about them. Does a resume ever say anything about the person? I don’t think so. But it may be the place to start.
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There’s a Renaissance of sorts happening in the music business right now by which music we’ve lost track of, or have ignored outright, due to the current ubiquity of pop music is crawling out from the primordial ooze and is being reborn as something new. New masters, new packaging and/or new formats are moving in to replace the gaping hole left by marginilized MP3 files and the impending death of CDs.
Please allow me to start this column with an aside. Each year, I compile a list of albums I consider the best. Last year, I picked Lost Leaders‘ self-titled album because it had that indescribable something which made me come back to it again and again. I mean, I love this album!!!
Lots going on in music these days— Apple announcing their foray into streaming (I love the headlines such as “Apple May Save the Recording Industry”— I mean, what idiot thought that one up?) and the Brian Wilson biopic (My buddy Stan Twist says that if you are either a Brian Wilson or a Beach Boys fan, you won’t want to miss it) and there are lots of new albums to go over. And, as always, old ones too. But…
On November 10, 2014 Pink Floyd released its latest , and presumed last, studio album ‘The Endless River‘. It broke existing records on iTunes for pre-sales [a redundant idea if you consider that they can generate an infinite number of MP3s at will]. It also turns out that it’s not a bad album.
I’m like the A-Team’s Hannibal Smith in that I too love it when a plan comes together and love it even more when it balloons into an epic tale of adventure, lust and romance. The romance part, of course, would be my endless fascination for the music of the bands (past, present and future) which came out of the musicians who comprised Notary Sojac, the band few knew and even fewer knew about.
Jack Bruce is dead. Long live Jack Bruce. And long live the musical era he lived in though that will soon be dead, too. As dead as Bix Beiderbecke. As dead as Glenn Miller. As dead as Frank Sinatra. As dead as … well, you get my drift.
I watched/listened to a short clip of a Jim Dawson concert this past week. Most of you don’t know the name, I am sure, but Dawson was at the forefront of my obsession with records back in 1971 and his Songman album is a treasure I would not part with except to Dawson himself. He was part folkie as were so many back then— the beginning of the real singer/songwriter movement— and experimenting with layers of sounds.
I have learned my lesson. Numerous times over the past few years, I have been caught at my desk, coffee at hand, spewing said coffee in copious amounts thanks to the writings of my colleagues here at DBAWIS, sometimes through the mouth and sometimes through the nose. It is altogether possible that I have unknowingly spewed through various other orifices of my body as well, but by the time I get through laughing, everything is dry and, therefore, in the distant past, as it were.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 